Firm Boasts Breakthrough in Key Step in Producing Aerospace Parts

Goldsworthy Engineering, a small Torrance-based firm, believes that it has achieved a significant technical advance in automated tools that will permit the aerospace industry to greatly improve its usage of composite materials, which are fiber-reinforced plastics.

Composites are widely known for their use in tennis rackets, golf clubs and certain automobile parts, but aircraft and missiles manufacturers are the largest user of the material.

The materials are made by layering strips of graphite, boron or carbon cloths impregnated with epoxy and then curing the material in an autoclave. The result is a high-strength and low-weight material, ideally suited to aerospace needs.

But the layering of the materials is a time-consuming and labor-intensive job. So far, the aerospace industry has had few automatic machine tools that could increasing productivity in composites.

Goldsworthy, one of three U.S. firms that produce composite machine tools, has introduced the first automatic composite tape machine that can lay composite tapes over irregular curved surfaces.

“Almost every aircraft part is a curved surface,” said Brandt Goldsworthy, president of the firm. “The old rule was you couldn’t place tape on a compound curve because it would wrinkle. This is the first tape placement machine that is capable of laying up a compound curvature.”

The machine uses two stages to prepare and lay composite tapes. The first stage cuts all the tape for a complete part and stores it in a tape reel cassette. The cassette is then placed in the tape placement stage of the machine, which lays the cut tapes in the position.

So far, Goldsworthy has built two of the $3.4 million machines. The first went to Dassault Aircraft of France. A second is going to Vertol, the helicopter unit of Boeing.

Automation is expected to solve two critical problems that have plagued composites, Goldsworthy said. It should greatly improve the so-called “repeatability” of parts, meaning the ability to mass produce composite parts with uniform shape and quality. Second, it should improve aerospace firm’s ability to manufacture composite parts to tight schedules, something that is lacking in current labor-intensive techniques.

Composites usage is expected to boom in coming years, with estimates that some military aircraft will use composites for half of their structure.

Goldsworthy, a subsidiary of the French machine tool firm MFL, has seen its revenue leap to $8 million from only $1.5 million three years ago, Goldsworthy said.